SCHOLARLY POLEMIC: BARTOLOMEO FONZIO’S FORGOTTEN COMMENTARY ON JUVENAL
Gergő Gellérfi
Summary
Bartolomeo Fonzio’s Annotationes in Iuvenalem contains observations on the first six Satires of Juvenal. This commentary was written in the last decade of the 15th century, and it fits well into the Quattrocento’s increased interest in Juvenal. Remarkably, it seems to have been Fonzio’s main purpose to refute earlier views on Juvenal. His method of commenting makes the work peculiar: many of his annotationes comment in fact in the first place on earlier commentators on Juvenal – such as Giorgio Merula, Giorgio Valla, Domizio Calderini, and Angelo Poliziano. Some of Fonzio’s comments are very offensive, and are written in the style of personal attacks. In this contribution, I examine the characteristics of Fonzio’s commentary, his methods of refutation and argumentation, and his philological achievements.
Introduction
Bartolomeo Fonzio (B. della Fonte, or Latinized as Bartholomaeus Fontius), a 15th-century Italian humanist and professor at the University of Florence in the 1480s, attracted attention in modern scholarship for, among other things, his commentary on the Satires of Persius,1 his Poetics,2 his inaugural orations preceding his six-lecture series in Florence,3 and his connections with Hungary, especially with King Matthias Corvinus and the royal library (Bibliotheca Corviniana).4 The only monograph on Fonzio was written by Concetto Marchesi, who reconstructed the scholar’s life and oeuvre at the end of the 19th century through archival research and published his achievements in 1900.5
Fonzio’s first significant philological work was his commentary on Persius, which he finished about 1471. It was published in Milan in 1477 and was reprinted many times.6 In
1 This commentary is the topic of ongoing research at Pázmány Péter Catholic University.
2 Trinkaus C., “The Unknown Quattrocento Poetics of Bartolommeo della Fonte”, Studies in the Renaissance 13 (1966) 40–122.
3 Trinkaus C., “A Humanist’s Image of Humanism: The Inaugural Orations of Bartolommeo della Fonte”, Studies in the Renaissance 7 (1960) 90–147.
4 Most recently Takács L., “Bartholomaeus Fontius and His Works in the Bibliotheca Corviniana of King Matthias”, in Kovács P. – Szovák K. (eds.), Infima aetas Pannonica: Studies in Late Medieval Hungarian History (Budapest: 2010) 294–308.
5 Marchesi C., Bartolomeo della Fonte (Catania: 1900). Marchesi gives a detailed account of Fonzio’s biography on pages 9–97.
6 Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Image” 127–128 gives a list of the manuscripts and the incunabula editions.
1481, Fonzio was appointed a professor of poetry and oratory at the University of Florence;
his colleagues were, among others, Angelo Poliziano and his former professor, Cristoforo Landino, but his stipend was much less than those of the others. In his first few years at the university, Fonzio gave one lecture series on a poet and another on an orator or a historian.
The first lecture series dealt with the Orations of Cicero and the epos of Valerius Flaccus (Argonautica). Fonzio had written a commentary in eight books --which has since been lost-- on the latter work; perhaps he dedicated it to Matthias Corvinus in 1489. The next year, Fonzio lectured on Lucan and Caesar’s De bello civili. Judging by his notebooks, Fonzio was very industrious, made his own compilations of various topics, and was familiar with the Latin poetry and rhetoric of Cicero and Quintilian.7
In November 1483, Fonzio left Florence for Rome because of a conflict with Angelo Poliziano, and he started to teach eloquence. He returned after one year, but henceforth he gave only a single lecture series annually.8 His topics were Silius’ Punica, Horace’s Odes and Satires, and Juvenal’s Satires, respectively. He held inaugural orations at the commencement of his courses,9 and in the last one, entitled In satyrae et studiorum humanitatis laudationem, he defended humanistic studies against law and medicine (that were taught at Pisa from a common budget with the Florentine studio).10 His lecture series on Juvenal may have been his answer to Poliziano’s public lecture on the satirist that took place two years earlier.11 In 1489, some months before the death of Matthias Corvinus, Fonzio travelled to Buda, where he was preparing a catalogue for the Bibliotheca Corviniana. In the early 1490s, between the summer of 1490 and the spring of 1492,12 he finished his Poetics, and soon he left Florence and the humanist’s way of life to become a priest in a small Italian town.13 He died in 1513.
Trinkaus, the author of two important articles dealing with Fonzio, emphasizes that
‘one cannot resolve the question whether Fontius was a scholar-critic or a poet-critic’,14 since Fonzio was not only a scholar and a professor but also a poet, and he wrote both Latin and Italian verse.15 One book of his Elegiarum libri duo has been found, and additional poems are also listed by Kristeller, who praised their quality.16 Moreover, Fonzio also made poetic translations from Greek authors, Pseudo-Phocylides, and the Argonauticon of Apollonius Rhodius, of which the latter was preserved. For the estimation of his works as a poet and a translator, Trinkaus’s opinion is worth quoting; he said that Fonzio was ‘a careful and even gifted philologist, commentator, and critic of texts. He was relatively mediocre in other respects’.17
7 Ibidem 91–94, and Trinkaus, “The Unknown Quattrocento Poetics” 51–53.
8 Ibidem.
9 Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Image” deals with these orations.
10 Ibidem 94.
11 Marchesi, Bartolomeo della Fonte 125.
12 For the dating of the work, see Trinkaus, “The Unknown Quattrocento Poetics” 44–45.
13 Marchesi, Bartolomeo della Fonte 94–97.
14 Trinkaus, “The Unknown Quattrocento Poetics” 54.
15 A list of Fonzio’s works, manuscripts, and editions is given by Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Image”
126–132.
16 Kristeller P. O., Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome: 1956) 381–382.
17 Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Image” 94.
Fonzio’s Annotationes fits well into the Quattrocento’s increased interest in Juvenal.
From the middle of the century, new commentaries took the place of the earlier, mainly anonymous scholia, the earliest of which originated from a lost commentary from about 400.18 The rising interest in Juvenal can be traced back to various causes: the enigmatic nature of Juvenal’s verses; the popularity of contemporary satire; and the suitability for the exposition of the commentators’ own erudition. In the meantime, Juvenal’s Satires became not only the subject of commentaries but a part of education and the topic of public lectures as well. Enea Silvio Piccolomini, for example, mentioned Juvenal as one of the authors to be studied by the young Ladislaus of Bohemia and Hungary. From the 1440s, some prominent Italian humanists were concerned with Juvenal: Guarino da Verona, Giovanni Tortelli,19 Gaspare Veronese, Angelo Sabino, Domizio Calderini, Giorgio Merula, Giorgio Valla, Poliziano,20 and Antonio Mancinelli, among others. The Satires incited violent quarrels, for instance, between Sabino and Calderini or between Merula and Poliziano--the latter was the first significant dispute between two humanists of the same school.21
Fonzio’s Annotationes in Iuvenalem were written at the end of the Quattrocento . The work was dated to 1489-1490 by Marchesi,22 and this dating has been accepted by Sanford, among others.23 However, this dating seems to be unacceptable, since Fonzio cites Antonio Mancinelli seven times, and once he uses the verb scribit, so he certainly refers to a written work.24 Mancinelli’s Familiare commentum concerning Juvenal was published in 1492.
Although Fonzio does not specify his source for Mancinelli’s views, he mentions that Mancinelli on one occasion refers to Poliziano’s Miscellanea, published in 1489.25 In the Familiare commentum, Mancinelli does cite Poliziano concerning that locus.26 Thus, in my opinion, the dating accepted previously must be rejected, and the Familiare commentum’s publication date of 1492 can be designated as the terminus post quem of the Annotationes.27
18 The compiler could be Nicaeus, the apprentice of Servius, whose name appears in two manuscripts by Juvenal. Friedländer discusses the role of Nicaeus in the textual tradition of Juvenal’s Satires: D. Junii Juvenalis, Saturarum libri V mit erklärenden Anmerkungen, ed. L.
Friedländer (Leipzig: 1895) 81–88.
19 Sanford E.M., “Giovanni Tortelli's Commentary on Juvenal”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 82 (1951) 207–218.
20 For Fonzio and Poliziano, see Daneloni A., “Tra le carte di Fonzio: nuove testimonianze dell’Expositio Iuvenalis del Poliziano”, in Gargan L. – Sacchi M. P. (eds.), I Classici e
L’Universita Umanistica: Atti del Convegno di Pavia 22-24 novembre 2001 (Messina: 2004) 507–
607.
21 Unless noted otherwise, the source of the data in this paragraph is Sanford’s essential article on Juvenal’s Renaissance Commentaries: Sanford E. M., “Renaissance Commentaries on Juvenal”, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 79 (1948) 92–112.
22 Marchesi, Bartolomeo della Fonte 125.
23 Sanford, “Renaissance Commentaries on Juvenal” 106.
24 Fol. 25v: ‘[…], scribit Mancinellus, […]’ - ‘[…], writes Mancinelli, […]’.
25 Fol. 17v: ‘Mancinellus tamen credo novitate interpretationis impulsus Polytianum secutus Miscellaneorum capite septimo et sexagesimo […]’- ‘However, Mancinelli, I think, inspired by the novelty of the interpretation, follows chapter 67 of Poliziano’s Miscellanea […]’.
26 I have examined the edition from 1505: Mancinelli Antonio, Juvenalis familiare commentum.
(Paris, Josse Bade: 1505) fol. XVIII.
27 Daneloni comes to the same conclusion, and he even states that the work was written about 1495-1496. See Daneloni, “Tra le carte di Fonzio” 529–530. Sanford dismissed the possibility of a compilation date of 1492 or later because ‘references to the commentary Mancinelli, first
Research has paid little attention to the work so far. Marchesi devotes four pages to the Annotationes in his monograph on Fonzio, wherein he concentrates on his vituperation of his rivals (among them Poliziano) and quotes long passages from the work; however, he does not get into deeper analysis.28 Sanford gives only two sentences to the Annotationes in his aforementioned article,29 and he deals with it on two pages in the chapter on Juvenal in the first volume of Catalogus translationum and commentariorum.30 More recently, Daneloni discussed the Annotationes in his treatise on Poliziano and Fonzio’s other, much shorter work on Juvenal.31 As mentioned above, Daneloni corrects the earlier dating of the work, and he briefly exposes Fonzio’s attitude toward the earlier commentators Merula, Valla, Calderini, and Poliziano.32
The Commentary
The Annotationes in Iuvenalem, dedicated to Lorenzo Strozzi,33 seems incomplete, as it contains observations only on the first six of the sixteen Juvenalian Satires. It has never been published, and it is not mentioned by later commentators either.34 It is preserved in one manuscript only (Florence, Bibliotheca Riccardiana, codex 1172). The first forty-five folios of the codex contain Fonzio’s works in his own hand: his observations on Livy, Book 21 (fols.
1-9); his Annotationes in Iuvenalem; and his Annales suorum temporum. Xenophon’s Ephesian Tale occupies the remaining part of the codex.35 Each page of the Annotationes has about thirty lines, a large left margin, and wide empty parts at the top and the bottom that the author used for emendations on a few pages.
Concerning the characteristics of the Annotationes, we must first observe that Fonzio’s main purpose was to question and refute earlier views, since he cites the opinions of other scholars in the case of every examined locus.36 On these occasions, he refers to the criticized humanists with expressions such as ‘alii interpretes’, ‘quidam litterator’, ‘a quibusdam’, and
‘non desint, qui’. Giorgio Valla, Giorgio Merula, and Domizio Calderini figure most prominently in the Annotationes, as the whole work seems to be written as an attack against
published 1492, are inserted only as marginal additions’. Sanford E. M., “Juvenal”, in Kristeller P.
O. (ed.), Catalogus translationum et commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries I (Washington: 1960) 227. However, the sentence cited above, where Mancinelli refers to Poliziano’s Miscellanea, belongs to the main text, and it can’t be regarded as a later addition.
28 Marchesi, Bartolomeo della Fonte 125–128.
29 Sanford, “Renaissance Commentaries on Juvenal” 106.
30 Sanford, “Juvenal” 227–229.
31 Cod. Ric. 153. fols. 135–139.
32 Daneloni, “Tra le carte di Fonzio” 529–531.
33 Daneloni identifies ‘Laurentius Stroza’ as Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi (1489-1549); see Daneloni,
“Tra le carte di Fonzio” 530.
34 Sanford, “Renaissance Commentaries on Juvenal” 106.
35 Morpurgo describes the codex in the catalogue of the manuscripts of the Biblioteca Riccardiana:
Morpurgo S., I manoscritti della R. Biblioteca Riccardiana di Firenze I. Manoscritti Italiani (Rome: 1900) 219–220.
36 He exposes eighty-one problems in Juvenal; of these, there are only four where he does not mention any other
commentator by name whose views he refutes.
them. Fonzio refutes Giorgio Valla in forty different commentary discussions, Merula in thirty-three, and in some twenty-three he questions Calderini’s views. Although Angelo Poliziano was a bitter enemy of Fonzio,37 for the Juvenal commentary he is much less important than the other three commentators, as he is mentioned only three times.
Furthermore, Fonzio extends his polemical discussions on three other humanists: Antonio Mancinelli, whose Familiare commentum gives the terminus post quem of 1492 (seven times); Giovanni Tortelli (four times); and Francesco Filelfo (remark on the Convivia Mediolanensia). Fonzio also mentions Francesco Gaddi, a friend of his since the early 1470s38: Fonzio says that he has examined Gaddi’s ‘very old’ manuscript of Juvenal.39
Fonzio discussed and criticized commentaries from Roman Antiquity as well. For example, he reacted to Servius’s annotations on Virgil’s Aeneid and Bucolics in a very harsh and outspoken way. He was even more critical of annotations ascribed to the grammarian Probus. Giorgio Valla had quoted in his commentary ancient scholia from a manuscript under the name of the ancient grammarian Probus (Pseudo-Probus; since lost).40 Fonzio did not agree a single time with Pseudo-Probus’s solutions, and he criticized Giorgio Valla heavily for doing so.41
In the structure of the Annotationes we can observe a kind of disproportion, since the length of the discussion of a single satire and the number of the analyzed Juvenalian passages differ largely through the work. As he goes forth on the Satires, the author deals proportionally less and less with a single poem. Fonzio examines twenty-four problems of the 171-line Satire 1 in fifteen and a half pages, while in the case of Satire 2, which is nearly the same length, he highlights only fourteen problems and discusses them in ten and a half pages.
The problems of Satire 4, Satire 5, and the first lines of Satire 6 together occupy only six and a half pages out of forty-nine.
Fonzio’s aggressive tone, which can be observed in the disputation and vituperation of his rivals, makes the work peculiar. Some of his comments on Merula, Valla, and Poliziano are very offensive, and he even gets personal on a few occasions. At some points in his work, Fonzio highlights contradictions in the cited opinion, or he emphasizes how much it differs from Juvenal’s intentions. He says about Merula’s remark in line 49 of Satire 1: ‘I don’t know if I ever have read anything that contradicted itself that much’.42 Not much later, Fonzio questions Merula’s knowledge of the topic and the correctness of his work. He cites Merula’s
37 Marchesi, Bartolomeo della Fonte 125.
38 Lillie A., Florentine Villas in the Fifteenth Century: An Architectural and Social History (Cambridge: 2005) 187.
39 Fol. 30v: ‘Inspexi tamen antiquissimum Francisci Gaddii nostri codicem […]’.
40 For this Probus, see Parker’s article: Parker H., “Other Remarks on the Other Sulpicia”, The Classical World 86 (1992) 89–95.
41 For example, fol. 21v: ‘At si Probum iam nimium saepe nugas et inania verba iactantem videt, quid eius tam crebro stolida refert dicta?’ - ‘But if he understands that Probus comes up more than too many times with ridiculous remarks and words without any content, why does he cite so many times his stupid remarks?’.
42 Fol. 14v: ‘Nescio an quicquam inter se tam discrepans unquam legerim.’.
opinion on the ‘sportula’ (‘paltry basket’),43 and says that ‘it reveals that he does not know how the Emperors used to feed the Roman plebs’.44 Concerning the proper name ‘Isaeus’ in line 74 of Satire 4, Merula states that it refers to the orator Isaeus or the River Isaeus.
Regarding the latter, Fonzio declares that this was only invented by Merula, while it does not make sense.45
Giorgio Valla is the other main target of Fonzio’s harsh criticism. On the verso of fol.
13, he underlines the obscurity of Valla’s style, saying that the reader can hardly discern what Valla means.46 The strongest criticism of Valla can be found on fol. 25r, where Fonzio questions Valla’s sanity.47 Of course, Fonzio’s Florentine rival, Poliziano, is attacked violently in the Annotationes as well. Discussing lines 81-86 of Satire 1, Fonzio examines the grammatical structure of the passage, and for that purpose he uses the last lines of Virgil’s Eclogue 4. He assesses Poliziano’s opinion on these lines in the following way: ‘he [i.e.
Poliziano] makes the content which in itself is sufficiently clear and simple, obscure through long digressions that do not contribute at all to the meaning or structure [of Juvenal’s verses]’.48 The personal nature of their rivalry becomes apparent in one comment, since Poliziano is the only one of the cited humanists whose biographical data is dealt with when Fonzio mentions his contemporary’s public lectures.49
Fonzio’s attitude toward Calderini is different, as he always speaks about him in a tone of respect.50 Disputing his views, the author only says that they contradict the words of the poet,51 but he never makes sarcastic comments. While Fonzio sometimes underlines the shortcomings of other scholars’ knowledge, he is permissive with Calderini, using expressions like ‘as if he wouldn’t know’52 instead of stating that he does not know something.
Fonzio sometimes reflects on the refuted opinions with very smart and humorous comments. On the verso of fol. 17, Fonzio refers to Mancinelli--who thought that with the verb ‘crepitat’53 Juvenal was talking about a crow--by saying: ‘he croaks about the crow’.54 Interpreting lines 63-64 of Satire 3, Fonzio makes two comments of this kind; first, he states
43 Juvenal 1, 95–96: ‘Nunc sportula primo limine parva sedet…’ - ‘Now the paltry basket sits on the doorstep […]’.
44 Fol. 17r: ‘Ex quo parum scisse arguitur imperantium Caesarum in alenda Romana plebe consuetudinem […]’.
45 Fol. 26r: ‘Quem Isaeum fluvium posuisse ubi vero locorum sit, non addidisse, indicio est ab eo confictum esse contra poetae mentem […]’ - ‘The fact that he mentioned the river Isaeus, but did not say where it is situated, indicates that heinvented the river by himself, against the intentions of the poet […]’.
46 ‘Quae omnia ita confuse refert, ut vix lector quid probet, inveniat’- ‘All that he presents in such a disorderly and chaotic way that the reader hardly comes across anything he could agree with’.
47 ‘[…] hastam pro vindicta poni nemo sanae mentis approbat’ - ‘[…] nobody with sane mind would agree to put the word “hasta” here for “vindicta”’.
48 Fol. 16v: ‘Qui rem per se satis apertam et facilem verborum nihil ad sententiam aut ordinem attinentium ambagibus obscuram reddidit’.
49 Fol. 25r: ‘[…] nisi Polytiano hunc poetam publice profitenti placuisset [...]’ - ‘[…] if it would not have been Poliziano’s opinion in his public lectures on this poet [...]’.
50 This is also emphasized by Daneloni, “Tra le carte di Fonzio” 531.
51 For example, on fol. 16r: ‘contrarium verbis poetae est’.
52 Fol. 25v: ‘tanquam nesciat’
53 Juvenal 1, 116.
54 Fol. 17v: ‘[…] nescio quid cornicatur inepte’ - ‘[…] I don’t know why he stupidly croaks ’.
that nothing can be more ‘obliquus’ (‘weird’) than Valla, who treats the words ‘obliquus’ and
‘rusticus’ as synonyms,55 and not much later he adds that the same adjective can be understood as ‘drunk’ only by someone who is actually drunk.56
The methods of Fonzio’s argumentation are very diverse, as are their lengths. We can find very simple explanations in his work, such as when he refutes earlier views using the etymology of a given word. The adverb ‘obiter’ in line 241 of Satire 3 had been interpreted by Merula as ‘praecise’ or ‘tali causa’. Fonzio says about this:
This compound consists of two words, the word ‘ob’ that means ‘circum’ and the word ‘iter’. And what happens ‘circum iter’ that happens underway, as the things go along. Thus the word ‘obiter’ means ‘at the same time’,
‘meanwhile’.57
To identify historical characters, Fonzio often refers to other ancient authors. Giorgio Valla states about line 24 of Satire 1 that the subject of ‘opibus cum provocet unus’ is Licinus, who lived in the age of Augustus. Fonzio quotes Horace and refers to Suetonius in explaining why Valla could have Licinus in mind, and then he quotes Martial to identify this enriched barber as Cinnamus.58 Elsewhere, he uses other authors simply to explain the meaning of a word.
One example of this occurs with the verb ‘reponam’ in the first line of Satire 1; this term was interpreted as ‘scribam’ by earlier commentators, but Fonzio quotes Cicero to prove that the meaning of the verb ‘reponere’ is ‘to give back’ here.59 The list of cited ancient authors is diverse; it contains forty different writers and poets, 60 of whom the following are mentioned the most frequently: Suetonius (17), Martial (13), Horace (10), Virgil (7), Tacitus (6), the two Plinys (6 each), and Livy (5). The reason for the frequent occurrences of Suetonius and Martial is that Fonzio used their works as historical sources concerning Juvenal’s age, so it is not surprising that the most-cited single work is the Life of Domitian (9).
55 Fol. 25v: ‘[…] Georgio Valla nihil excogitari potest obliquius scribente “obliquas idest rusticas”[…]’ ‘[…] one can’t imagine anything more “obliquus “(“boorish”) than Giorgio Valla who writes that “obliquas” (“weired”) means “rusticas” (“boorish”) […]’.
56 Fol. 25v: ‘[…] non nisi accipietur ab ebriis’ - ‘[…] that nobody will accept except drunk people’.
57 Fols. 29r–29v: ‘Ex ob, quod circum significat et iter haec est composita dictio, quasi circum iter.
Quae vero circum iter fiunt, intereundum et in transita quodammodo fiunt. Unde obiter quasi pariter ac simul, interimque designat.’
58 The explanation can be found on fol. 12r.
59 Fol. 11r: ‘Vicissim autem referre quippiam hoc verbum significare Tullius ad Lentulum de Vatinio teste scribens ita ostendit: “Cur autem laudarim, peto a te, ut id a me neve in hoc reo, neve in aliis requiras, ne tibi ego idem reponam cum veneris, tametsi possum vel absenti”.’ - ‘Tullius demonstrates that this word means giving back in turn, when he writes to Lentulus about the witness Vatinius: “But my reason for testifying to his character I beg you will not ask, either in the case of this defendant or of others, lest I retaliate by asking you the same question when you come, home: though I can do so even before you return”.’ Fonzio quotes Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares I, 9, 19. transl. by E.S. Shuckburgh.
60 Ammianus, Appian, Apuleius, Caesar, Catullus, Cicero, Cinna, Dio Cassius, Festus,
Germanicus, Hieronymus, Hirtius, Homer, Horace, Hyginus, Lactantius, Livy, Macrobius, Martial, Martianus Capella, Ovid, Persius, Petronius, Plato, Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger, Plutarch, Propertius, Quintilian, Servius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Silius Italicus, Statius, Strabo, Suetonius, Tacitus, Terence, Valerius Flaccus, Varro, Virgil.
For the discussion of a few passages, Fonzio exceptionally does not use any sources, but interprets Juvenal’s words based on common sense. An earlier opinion identified the ugly weaver woman sitting on a trunk in Satire 2 as Philomela.61 Fonzio rejects this idea by means of two arguments: on the one hand, he proves that the adjective ‘horrida’ does not suit Philomela, and on the other hand, he argues that the present tense verb ‘facit’ makes the identification impossible.62 Sometimes Fonzio uses philosophical argumentation, such as in the explanation of the passage in Satire 1 that says that the exiled Marius starts drinking in the eighth hour while the gods are angry with him.63 Fonzio explains the latter in this way:
For indeed a god sometimes grants these goods and pleasures for a short time even to those people whom he is angry with, and on the contrary: whom a god is friendly with, lets him also worry about the inconveniences of life. Thus even the bad and the guilty, whom a deity is angry with, can indulge themselves. 64
Certain explanations are much longer, sometimes even occupying more than a full page.
These interpretations are very complex, and sometimes Fonzio wanders far from the subject, just like he does in the interpretation of lines 81-86 of Satire 1, where he analyzes the last lines of Virgil’s Eclogue 4 over nearly a full page. Of course, on other occasions Fonzio stays on topic: the longest annotation discusses a passage of Satire 2 where Juvenal talks about an adulterer who was defiled by a fatal union.65 Valla states that the adulterer is Claudius and supports that statement with three elements of the passage: the mention of the abortifacients, the parts of the foetuses resembling the mother’s uncle, and the revived bitter laws. Fonzio perfectly proves that these three expressions do not refer to Claudius but Domitian, and in order to prove his opinion he quotes Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Martial.
In his various argumentations, Fonzio mainly concentrates on the facts and uses historical and biographical data, etymologies, and ancient citations to refute false views, staying far away from allegorical interpretations. His explanations show a wide knowledge of antiquity, and probably he was helped by his aforementioned compilations of ancient topics.66 Generally, for the Annotationes on Juvenal the same is true as for his commentary on Persius:
‘it is essentially philological criticism rather than interpretation in a wider aesthetic sense’.67 Examining the achievements of Fonzio, I have compared his views with the two most recent full commentaries on Juvenal,68 as well as the translation and notes of the Loeb
61 Juvenal 2, 57.
62 The explanation can be found on fol. 21 r.
63 Juvenal 1, 49–50.
64 Fols. 14v–15r: ‘Etenim deus et cui iratus est quandoque temporalia haec bona et quaecunque voluptuosa permittit, et contra cui amicus est, omnibus vitae huius incommodis angi sinit. Unde etiam nocentes et mali irato deo sibi indulgent.’
65 Juvenal. 2, 29–33. The explanation begins on the verso of fol. 19 and ends on the verso of fol.
20.
66 See n. 7. above.
67 Trinkaus, “The Unknown Quattrocento Poetics” 51.
68 Courtney E., A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal (London: 1980). Ferguson J., Juvenal:
The Satires (New York: 1982).
Classical Library edition.69 There are seventy-one interpretations in the Annotationes that can be analyzed in this way. In forty-eight instances Fonzio’s opinion agrees with the modern views, in ten more cases they are partly the same, and on only eleven occasions do the modern opinions differ from those of Fonzio.
Since the confutation of the views of other commentators is even more important for Fonzio than the explanation of the problematic passages, the success rate of his refutations is remarkable. There are only two passages of the aforementioned seventy-one where the commentaries or Ramsay’s translation accepts the opinions that Fonzio rejected. On fol. 29v, Fonzio criticizes Valla because he understood the subject of the expression ‘planta magna’ (3, 247) as a collective noun, the feet of the people, while Fonzio explains the ‘planta magna’ as the long and wide foot of an armed soldier.70 However, Courtney and Ferguson give the same interpretation as Valla,71 and Ramsay also uses the plural ‘feet’.72 Concerning line 72 of Satire 5, Fonzio argues that the ‘artocopi’ dative belongs to the expression ‘salva sit reverentia’ and not ‘artoptae’, accepted by Valla.73 In addition to both of the aforementioned commentaries and the Loeb edition,74 Clausen’s edition from Oxford also contains ‘artoptae’
in this line.75 However, the misunderstanding of ‘planta magna’ and the different variant in 5, 72 can be considered negligible compared with the other sixty-nine refutations supported by the modern interpretations. Thus, regarding the criticism of his contemporaries, Fonzio’s work is almost perfect in the light of modern views.
Fonzio’s Annotationes in Iuvenalem is a forgotten achievement of the rising interest in Juvenal at the end of the 15th century. The rivalry between the scholars dealing with Juvenal was a strong incentive for the author to write down his views on the satirist’s problematic passages, as was the aforementioned desire for the exhibition of his own erudition, which is exposed in his various explanations. In his polemical work, Fonzio takes a critical stance against the commentaries on Juvenal that had been published earlier, and he successfully refutes the views of Valla, Merula, Calderini, and other humanists on almost every occasion.
Unlike their commentaries, Fonzio’s work has never been published, in spite of the fact that the majority of his explanations correspond to the modern views on these passages. The new edition of the Annotationes in Iuvenalem will be completed soon, and in this way Bartolomeo Fonzio can take his deserved place in the history of research on Juvenal.
69 Juvenal and Persius, ed. G. G. Ramsay (London – Cambridge: 1961).
70Fol. 29v: ‘Valla magnam plantam pro pedibus multorum capit ignarus magnam plantam non ad numerum, sed ad armatae plantae militis latitudinem magnitudinemque referri.’ ‘Valla understands the “great sole” as the feet of the mob, not knowing that the “great sole” does not refer to the number, but to the width and the size of the sole of an armoured soldier’.
71 Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal 187: ‘PLANTA is collective’; Ferguson, Juvenal: The Satires 152: ‘sing. for pl., but it’s as if the crowd has a collective foot’.
72 Juvenal and Persius 51.
73 Fol. 33v: ‘Non “artocopi” idem Valla sed “artoptae” legit […] artopta cum sit artocopi vas […]
artocopus vero pistor sit, longe maior est artocopi reverentia quam artoptae’ - ‘The same Valla reads “artoptae” (to the bread pan) instead of “artocopi” (to the baker) […] since the “artopta” is the pan of the “artocopus”… while the “artocopus” is the baker, the reverence much more belongs to the “artocopus” (baker) rather than to the “artopta” (bread pan).’.
74 Courtney, A Commentary on the Satires of Juvenal 239; Ferguson, Juvenal: The Satires 177–
178; Juvenal and Persius 74.
75 A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuvenalis Saturae, ed. W. V. Clausen (Oxford: 1959).
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Index nominum entries Calderini, Domizio
Claudius (Roman Emperor)
Della Fonte, Bartolomeo: see: Fonzio, Bartolomeo Domitian (Roman Emperor)
Filelfo, Francesco Fonzio, Bartolomeo Gaddi, Francesco Guarino da Verona Horace
Juvenal
Ladislaus V (King of Hungary) Landino, Cristoforo
Livy
Mancinelli, Antonio Martial
Matthias, Corvinus (King of Hungary) Merula, Giorgio
Piccolomini, Enea Silvio: see: Pius II, Pope Pius II, Pope
Pliny the Elder Pliny the Younger Poliziano, Angelo Probus
Sabino, Angelo
Servius Honoratus, Marius Strozzi, Lorenzo
Suetonius, Gaius Tranquillus Tacitus, Publius Cornelius Tortelli, Giovanni
Valla, Giorgio Virgil
Veronese, Gaspare Xenophon of Ephesus
